Feeding Station

This project represents my first attempt at furniture making. For the last several months an appliance box (cardboard) covered our cat’s food so the dog would not clean it out (chocolate lab). I designed a feeding area to replace the box with a door big enough for the cat to walk through and smaller than the dogs shoulders. There is also an opening in the back big enough to pass food through. I modeled all the components individually in sketchup and then made dimensioned prints and a set of plans about 8-9 pages long. I used hardware store poplar 1”x2” for the legs and stretchers, a glue-up of 1”x4” poplar for the top, and 1/4” birch plywood for the sides. This project was more a method study than anything else and it resulted in something funtional. The box was constructed with all mortise and tenon joints and there was something satisfying about only using steel to attach the top.

I finished with some Minwax stain and several coats of polyurethane. The next project is a crib that needs to be done by April and this provided a lot of great practice and used most of the joinery I plan to incorporate for the project.

Congrats on the baby on the way,, great box, great idea, the lab I had, would have chewed through the wood..LOL..she chewed, toe/shoe molding, chair railing, hardwood floor, lanolium flooring,,sorry for the spelling…